SuperFreakonomics

SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa? What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common? Can eating kangaroo save the planet? Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else.

Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data

From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you'll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more.

Freakonomics: Revised Edition

Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life, from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing, and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head. Thus the new field of study contained in this audiobook: Freakonomics. Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

In this groundbreaking book, journalist and innovation expert Warren Berger shows that one of the most powerful forces for igniting change in business and in our daily lives is a simple, underappreciated tool - one that has been available to us since childhood. Questioning - deeply, imaginatively, "beautifully" - can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. So why are we often reluctant to ask "Why?"

Mind Hacking: How to Change Your Mind for Good in 21 Days

Have you ever wished you could reprogram your brain, just as a hacker would a computer? In this three-step guide to improving your mental habits, learn to take charge of your mind and banish negative thoughts, habits, and anxiety - in just 21 days!

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills

No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth - and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight.

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It

Based on Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal's wildly popular course The Science of Willpower,The Willpower Instinct is the first book to explain the new science of self-control and how it can be harnessed to improve our health, happiness, and productivity. Informed by the latest research and combining cutting-edge insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine, The Willpower Instinct explains exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters.

The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It...Every Time

While cheats and swindlers may be a dime a dozen, true conmen - the Bernie Madoffs, the Jim Bakkers, the Lance Armstrongs - are elegant, outsized personalities, artists of persuasion, and exploiters of trust. How do they do it? Why are they successful? And what keeps us falling for it over and over again? These are the questions that journalist and psychologist Maria Konnikova tackles in her mesmerizing new book.

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker

Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world’s biggest companies—and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable.

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

Why do only a few people get to say "I love my job?" It seems unfair that finding fulfillment at work is like winning a lottery; that only a few lucky ones get to feel valued by their organizations, to feel like they belong. Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders are creating environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

One of the world's leading authorities on global security, Marc Goodman takes listeners deep into the digital underground to expose the alarming ways criminals, corporations, and even countries are using new and emerging technologies against you - and how this makes everyone more vulnerable than ever imagined.

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

Imagine a chimpanzee rampaging through a data center powering everything from Google to Facebook. Infrastructure engineers use a software version of this "chaos monkey" to test online services' robustness - their ability to survive random failure and correct mistakes before they actually occur. Tech entrepreneurs are society's chaos monkeys, disruptors testing and transforming every aspect of our lives from transportation (Uber) and lodging (AirBnB) to television (Netflix) and dating (Tinder).

The Mother Tongue

With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson - the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent - brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience, and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't) to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.

Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built

In just a decade and a half, Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded Alibaba and built it into one of the world's largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba's $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs and presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China's booming private sector.

The Way of the SEAL: Think Like an Elite Warrior to Lead and Succeed

Ex-navy commander Mark Divine reveals exercises, meditations and focusing techniques to train your mind for mental toughness, emotional resilience, and uncanny intuition. Blending the tactics he learned from America's elite forces with lessons from the Spartans, samurai, Apache scouts, and other great warrior traditions, Divine has distilled the fundamentals of success into eight powerful principles that will transform you into the leader you always knew you could be. Learn to think like a SEAL, and take charge of your destiny at work, home and in life.

Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History

When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America faced a crisis. The new nation was deeply in debt and needed its economy to grow quickly, but its merchant ships were under attack. Pirates from North Africa's Barbary coast routinely captured American sailors and held them as slaves, demanding ransom and tribute payments far beyond what the new country could afford.

Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain - for Life

Debilitating brain disorders are on the rise - from children diagnosed with autism and ADHD to adults developing dementia at younger ages than ever before. But a medical revolution is underway that can solve this problem: Astonishing new research is revealing that the health of your brain is, to an extraordinary degree, dictated by the state of your microbiome - the vast population of organisms that live in your body and outnumber your own cells 10 to one.

Food: A Cultural Culinary History

Eating is an indispensable human activity. As a result, whether we realize it or not, the drive to obtain food has been a major catalyst across all of history, from prehistoric times to the present. Epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said it best: "Gastronomy governs the whole life of man."

Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

Origins explains the soul-stirring leaps in our understanding of the cosmos. From the first image of a galaxy birth to Spirit rover's exploration of Mars, to the discovery of water on one of Jupiter's moons, coauthors Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith conduct a galvanizing tour of the cosmos with clarity and exuberance.

Publisher's Summary

The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything.

Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and offer a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems. The topics range from business to philanthropy to sports to politics, all with the goal of retraining your brain. Along the way, you’ll learn the secrets of a Japanese hot-dog-eating champion, the reason an Australian doctor swallowed a batch of dangerous bacteria, and why Nigerian e-mail scammers make a point of saying they’re from Nigeria.

Levitt and Dubner plainly see the world like no one else. Now you can, too. Never before have such iconoclastic thinkers been so revealing - and so much fun to read.

Steven D. Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, was awarded the John Bates Clark medal, given to the most influential American economist under the age of 40.

Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning journalist and radio and TV personality, has worked for The New York Times and published three non-Freakonomics books.

If I were not a subscriber to the Freakonomics podcast I would give this a 4.5 star rating, but as I listened to the book I realized that much of it had been trotted out on the podcast. The book is one credit. The podcast is free. Where's the economics in that?

I've been following the Freaks for a while, so I was excited to get this audiobook and tear through it. But there was little in here that I hadn't heard in their previous books or on their podcast. Nearly everything they mentioned sounded very familiar.

The book was also extremely short, but supplemented by several podcasts at the end to artificially inflate the length. I'm tempted to ask audible for my money back. I wouldn't have spent an audible credit on such a short bit of entertainment. I could have put this credit towards a 47 hour Stephen King book and gotten waaaaaaaay more for my dollar.

I like the authors and their style, but this purchase was misleading and lacking in substance.

This is the second book this month that I've bought that has had podcast content tacked onto the end. This inflates the running time and makes you think you're getting more than you actually are. Any book that does this gets an immediate 1 star across the board. False advertising...

I loved Freakonomics, liked Superfreakonomics and have listened to every podcast they have ever put out. So I was excited for their next offering. Sadly, about 80% of this book is recycled from the podcast.

If you follow and listen to the almost weekly podcasts you will have heard pretty much all of this material already. I really like what these guys do, but I felt duped for buying this audio book. If you have not listened to any podcasts you will like it.

If you’ve listened to books by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner before, how does this one compare?

Again, this was really a remake of prior materials.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The delivery was fine.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

This is the third book in the Freakonomics series. You don’t need to read them in order. I’ve enjoyed all three. They talk about a variety of subjects.

One subject was intriguing and not answered. A multinational retail company bought tv ads 3 times a year. They had their highest sales at those three times. The authors asked the question did the ads cause the sales? Or did the sales cause the ads? The company took out ads on the three biggest sale days: Black Friday, Christmas, and Father’s Day. The same company paid for advertising inserts in newspapers year round. The authors suggested the company run an experiment to see if those ads paid off - by doing no ads in selected areas for a few months and then comparing sales data. The marketing guys refused to experiment. They said they’d get fired if they stopped advertising. But they admitted that one summer an intern forgot to place the ads in the Pittsburgh area and there was no decrease in sales during that time. And still, the marketing guys refused to experiment. I’m having trouble with that. I don’t think I’d want to invest money in that company.

The authors looked at religious communities in Germany - or somewhere near there. They found Protestants made more money than Catholics - even though they all started with the same wages per hour. The reasons were: Protestants worked more hours per week, Protestants were more likely to be self employed, and more Protestant women worked than Catholic women.

Many stories which seemed manipulated or forced to illustrate points some vaguely articulated. Also, some of the stories made longer than needed.

What was most disappointing about Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner ’s story?

The gap between what the book offers and what it delivers. Over promises and under delivers. The message of thinking like a freak is not actually accomplished. It is another compilation of studies like previous editions but this one much worse with no element of novelty. Many cliches.

What didn’t you like about Stephen J. Dubner’s performance?

It was average. Sometimes got monotonous.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Think Like a Freak?

I would cut or combine some chapters.

Any additional comments?

The first books made an impression that this book tried to leverage. Unfortunately, it did not do it.